New Hostage Photo Released

Following on from the hostage photo released Tuesday, another group has surfaced with their own photo, claiming to be holding American Air Force Major Matthew "Matt" Mason. No further details are available.

WARNING! Do not try to link directly to the image. Either host it on your own server or link to this blog post. Use the link at the end of this post. Bandwidth thievery is not tolerated. You are being lazy, stupid or greedy.

With apologies to the guys at Powerline.

WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE Wow! I've been privileged to get a few Instalanches since starting this blog, but this one is the biggest yet. I guess when you tap into America's love of action figures, you've hit the gold vein.

Do you think any of these will make it onto the editorial pages of America's newspapers? Are you seeing them on cable or network news? Of course not. And that's too bad.

Welcome and thanks to: Instapundit, Sgt. Stryker, Dean Esmay, Templar Pundit, Joe's Dartblog, and HispaLibertas. Click the links, as there are a lot more of these parodies out there. If I've missed yours, put a link in comments.

A Small Victory traces the hoax-busting back to Fark.

And don't miss the harrowing tale of a hard luck company of men and their evil captors.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE I'm having my best traffic day ever. More than 10,000 hits and still going strong. Take a look at the Sitemeter link over in the right column. Thanks to everyone for visiting and linking.

Please take a look at the rest of the blog. Memphis politics is a circus these days: renegade reporters, polygamous senators, baby-daddy mayors. And don't forget to try some of those Rocky Top Brigade (Tennessee bloggers) and Axis of Weevil (Alabama bloggers) links while you're here.

Yet more terrorist cruelty. Children everywhere are crying.

AND THERE'S MORE! Blogdex has me listed at #14, as of 5:30PM CST. Blogdex! That was an eye-opener, no question.

I was wondering how long it would take to bring Team America into this and sure enough, there you go. Go read the "faux FOX" news story. And, in a mind-twisting media double backflip, see how EtherPundit manages to drag the "kidnapping the Secretary of Defense" plot from 24 into the action-figure photo hoax. I'm seriously impressed.

NOT OVER YET Half-Bakered is now a Jokester of Note over at MSNBC. Still surprised at how this bit of humor is spreading.

HOLY FREAKIN' CRAP! Sorry to geek out over a numbers thing, but Half-Bakered is now #12 on Blogdex. (As of 11:30PM CST) I know 99% of you don't care and it sounds unseemly to brag this way, but I'm just a li'l ol' Memphis blog, obscure at best by Internet standards, so it's just, uh... rewarding, I guess. Yay team! I'm number twelve! I'm number twelve!

HE'S DEAD, JIM As of 3AM Thursday morning, I've dropped to #42 on Blogdex. By lunchtime, I'm falling like a rock. Ah, the heady ride is over. I've also spotted people hotlinking to the image, not this post, and had to set up an htaccess file on my server. Shame on y'all. Still getting lots of hits from all over, but the big Instalanche is over. The hoax photos are spreading all over now.