The new Osama bin Laden Halloween masks have arrived, but a New York costume shop owner says he is not selling them to just anyone who walks off the street.
"Not everyone can buy this mask," said Paul Blum, owner of Abracadabra, the mask and costume shop in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, of the bin Laden mask that he had thought up and which arrived on Tuesday.
And he wasn't just talking about the US$95 price tag.
"If they're going to use it to hang him, or put him in an electric chair, fine," Blum said.
"But to wear, to run around to have fun being bin Laden, I don't think so. I'm not going to sell them to people like that at all," he said.
Accordingly, a dummy in the store wearing the rubber mask was strapped into an electric chair, with the headpiece strapped around the faux-bin Laden's turban.
"All right sucker, we're going to fry. Any last words?" cracked Omar, a store employee.
Blum said he planned to interview potential buyers.
He said he would look at them "and see what they had in mind to do with it. And I'll be the judge whether to sell it to them or not."
Customers at the shop, which also features masks of recent US presidents, O.J. Simpson and Austin Powers as well as a host of ghouls and even the Mrs Bates cadaver from the famous Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho, lined up for a chance to slap the bin Laden figure.
And they were nearly universal in saying that they didn't find the mask offensive.
But they all thought any one who wore it on the streets of New York City was taking his life into his own hands.
"Any way we can keep the Halloween spirit alive," said Danielle Ahrens when asked what she thought about the mask, which depicts America's most wanted man as wild-eyed, complete with turban and long, gray-streaked beard.
"Any humor we can find in life is a good thing right now," said Ahrens, who found the mask inoffensive as long as it made bin Laden an object of ridicule or scorn.
"But it's probably not a smart move" to wear it outside, she said.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to lead a delegation to China next month, saying she hopes to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and bring stability to the Taiwan Strait. “I am grateful and happy to accept this invitation,” Cheng said in a statement from the KMT chairperson’s office. Cheng said she hopes both sides can work together to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, enhance exchange and cooperation, bring stability to the Taiwan Strait and improve people’s livelihoods. At today's news conference, Cheng said any efforts to
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
RSS